SXSW 2012 will be the place to preview of what is unfolding in the world of creative technology and we thought it would be great to inject some visualization goodness into the mix. That’s why we submitted a proposal for a panel about the intent and impact of visualization to SXSW Interactive. The line up is a healthy blend of designers and platform providers and we tried to strike a balance between science and pop culture.

The Panel

The rising amount of data exhaust of the past years has created the need for more and better tools to analyze what lies within this massive amount of raw material. Visualization leveraging the human cognition proves to be an invaluable tool to explore, digest, analyze and communicate the information. We reveal patterns, trends, relations or dependencies that were buried before.

But, what happens after we have created such an elaborate and powerful visualization and released it to the world? How does the it affect the beholder? How does it help shaping his opinions or even changing his behavior? Because, at the end of the day, visualization is simply a means to an end — a tool to achieve a bigger goal.

We have agreed that visualization as an instrument for analysis and communication works. Now, let’s answer the question how visualization can make an actual impact on education, economics, politics, society and the digital revolution.

Date: March 9–13, 2012, exact date and time of the panel to be announced.Location :Austin Convention Center, Austin TX.

The Panelists

Adam Breckler heads up product development at Visual.ly, a platform to create, share and explore infographics. After all the buzz when Visual.ly launched earlier this year, it will be super interesting to hear his view on the first year of operation in Spring 2012.

Adam Bly is the founder of Seed Media Group and Visualizing.org, a community of creative people working to make sense of complex issues through data and design. Visualizing.org continues to innovate in the area of sharing and promoting visualizations and Adam will furthermore bring in his experience from events like Visualizing Europe with the OECD and the European Commision or the World Economic Forum.

Ben­ja­min Wie­der­kehr is designer and managing director at Interactive Things, a user experience and data visualization studio from Zürich, Switzerland. Well, that’s me and I will be moderating this panel and guide the discussion.

Moritz Stefaner is a freelance information visualizer interested in information aesthetics, interactive visualization, and how the web transforms our understanding of information. Moritz relentlessly explores and pushes the boundaries of what we can achieve with visualization be it as the creator of the Better Life Index for the OECD or as a speaker at this year’s Eyeo Festival.

Ro­bin Ri­chards is the creative director of infographics at Jess3, a creative agency that specializes in data visualization from Washington, DC. Jess3 organized last year’s SXSW panel I had the pleasure to moderate and built the SXSWi Social Media Installation for Samsung.

We Need Your Support!

SXSW Interactive is a huge event and over 3600 proposals are competing for a time slot. To make our panel happen, we need your vote in the SXSW PanelPicker. It’s a small click for you, but a big favor for us if you could vote for us here.